Testing selects for people who actually want to do those jobs.
There is something to be said for the old cynical saying that actually wanting to have power is the No. 1 reason to be not trusted with it, and ideal rulers should be very, very reluctant to rule. Of course I want to be treated by a doctor who really wants to be a doctor and did not just inherit the job, but I am not really sure I really want to be ruled by someone who just loves to rule people. Not that I take modern monarchism seriously—I tend to mainly toy with the idea of sortitionism i.e. selecting rulers by random lot, because having people who are at least not worse than the average would be an improvement.
Asimov wrote a tale about a society where every national election was decided by the single vote of one randomly selected citizen. I’d flee such a country were it to exist.
There is something to be said for the old cynical saying that actually wanting to have power is the No. 1 reason to be not trusted with it, and ideal rulers should be very, very reluctant to rule. Of course I want to be treated by a doctor who really wants to be a doctor and did not just inherit the job, but I am not really sure I really want to be ruled by someone who just loves to rule people. Not that I take modern monarchism seriously—I tend to mainly toy with the idea of sortitionism i.e. selecting rulers by random lot, because having people who are at least not worse than the average would be an improvement.
Asimov wrote a tale about a society where every national election was decided by the single vote of one randomly selected citizen. I’d flee such a country were it to exist.
I fear you may overestimate “the average”.
(I also like the idea of sortition, but I would use it as a way of selecting some of the members of an otherwise somewhat-meritocratic body.)